When I look at myself in the mirror, I see the same thing I've been seeing since I was in elementary school and beginning to mature in puberty. I see a giant jutting stomach and rolls of fat. Is this image accurate? I don't know. It wasn't, back then. I've posted a picture here before of myself at age 9, when I thought I was enormous. I can look back now and see that I wasn't.

I have no idea what I look like now. I cannot get an accurate image in the mirror. I can see another woman who wears my size--in fact, she can even be wearing my clothes, and they can be snug on her where they are loose on me--and that woman doesn't look nearly as big to me as I look to myself. I cannot gauge myself with any kind of precision.

There is a website that shows a photographic height/weight chart. People submit their photographs and tell what height and weight they are. Therefore it shows a visual image of what someone else looks like at that height and weight.

I looked at the woman who claimed to be exactly my height and weight, and I thought, "No way!" Surely she is much smaller than I am. I kept looking until I found a woman who I thought was close to my body size. She is my height but weighs substantially more than I ever have, even at my heaviest. But there is no way I am going to be visually convinced she's bigger than I am. I have lost enough weight that soon I will have to go out shopping; even my bras don't fit me anymore. Still, I can't look in the mirror and see a smaller woman.

It's been this way since childhood. Will it ever change? If not, how can I find a more reliable way to get a visual for what I look like, since I don't trust that others who say they are the same height and weight I am are necessarily telling the truth?